Hi Newfi
Warning, this is long.?
I seen your post above asking about KIA’s DSG but postponed to answer until now because I wanted to get a few miles on the clock because from the time I picked the car up Tuesday until Wednesday morning the car was feeling rough to me, bearing in mind I’ve come from the VW DSG with a petrol engine.
Tuesday evening I took here down to Clevedon, North Somerset and back taking the long way home but only clocked about 35 miles and she was still rough engine wise and the DSG seem to be acting as if it was in Sports mode.
Wednesday we took her down through Cheddar Gorge, across Sedgemoor onto the M5 down to Exeter. I picked up speed in the acceleration lane at Bridgwater south with lightish traffic and with in seconds I’m leaving everyone behind and a quick glance at the speedo and I’ve hit 90 MPH. Although I was overtaking everything it just seemed like I was doing 60 however engine still sounding a bit noisy but being 4 years since driving diesel I expected that. Pulled the reins in on those 139 horses or I may pick up a ticket and things started to quite down but now back on the A road down to Exmouth doing 30 to 40 at best the engine seem to be settling down a bit but the DSG still had that tendency to hang on to low gears like its in Sports. BTW the KIA DSG does not have a Sports mode as such but the cars manual says something along the lines for Sports mode to put the DSG into Manual mode so you can decide the gear changes. Seems like that would work but for me it doesn’t because I can’t use the box in semi-auto mode but no problem for me because it was very rare for me to use S mode anyway. The way this engine pulls there would be no need for Sports mode anyway.
We stayed the night in Seaton, East Devon and started out for Swanage after breakfast but before leaving our digs the Carens had another test to preform and this one was dealing with freezing windscreen and the likes and here the car really started to shine.
The temperature at 8-00AM was around 0C and the windscreen was frozen solid, it wasn’t frost but looked like the car had frosted up overnight then thawed then froze again leaving a few millimetres of solid ice on the screen. Started the engine and put the climate control into auto defrost mode, turned on everything that produces heat with the likes of seats, steering wheel and wiper de-icer and waited about 3 minutes and I was ready to go except the wing mirrors were still frosted and had me thinking a trip to the dealer was on the cards to sort that out but then I realised the heated mirrors work in conjunction with the rear window heater but because my rear view isn’t good with the scooter in the back I never bothered to turn that on but once I did that sorted the wing mirrors frost in a minute.
We made our way along the coast to West Bay then carried on toward Weymouth but we stopped at the top of Abbotsbury Hill on the B3157 and even though I’ve travelled that road umpteen times the past 10 years (several times this year) I have never seen the view across the sea to towards Swanage in the east back to Dartmoor in the west as clear as it was Friday morning but now I add the bad news ? You would think this would be a good time to take a photo of my new baby but it passed me by so I haven’t done that yet but will when I can but anyway the journey across the Mendip Hills the morning before with it being a bit damp up there the car already was looking as if it hadn’t been clean for a 1000 miles.
After a couple of hours in Swanage we made our way back home and car at this time was getting for 200 miles on the clock and the DSG was really starting to settle down now with it acting like it was in normal mode and not sports and I made a comment to my good lady when we were near on 10 miles from home in Bristol how the engine had quietened down and was only getting noisy when booting it up hills.
So overall I’m really starting to like this car but those first 100 miles or so I was thinking “oh no I’ve made a big mistake here” but like I said I’m falling in love with her now.
It’s still all new to me at this time but one thing I think is a big let down on this car is the so called “Intelligent Stop and Start” and having a 139 horses under your bonnet you would think they would get that right for town driving but up-to the S/S on my Golf it really should be called dumb stop and start. With the VW’s S/S as you know when you come to a stop the SS kicks in and stays stopped in the DSG version until you touch the throttle but with the KIA and its intelligence its only operating while your foot is on the footbrake and this includes if you put the box in natural but maybe I’ve missed something there but seems pretty dumb way to do things to me.
Although I’ve frowned upon in car satnav in the past the one in the KIA seems to be a reasonable device being a Tom-Tom unit with Live Traffic but the downside is it only gives Live Traffic if you set a route to navigate while my TomTom PND shows Traffic on screen with no navigation taking place. That said while the car is parked on my hardstanding at home it connects to my home Wi-Fi and when the car is turned on the satnav screen puts a message saying “please wait, traffic information being downloaded” so if it does not give traffic unless navigating why is it downloading traffic information. Another investigation to do.
The satnav did score a silver medal while I was away because going along Exmouth sea-front on my scooter when I noticed the battery only had charge for another mile or so then it hit me, oh no, I’ve forgot to put the spare battery and the charger in the car. The satnav device was not able find any disability shops in the local area within its built in POI folder (don’t expect any can) but as the device is online connected via Wi-Fi to my phone you would think it could search for such unusual shops but no and I had to use Google search on my phone to get a Postcode of a shop in Exmouth about 2 miles away but the in car satnav took me straight there with no problems using said PC and I bought a charger so saved the day.
With that online search problem in mind brings me to Android Auto and Google Maps. This system I think would have found that disabled shop by a simple search then that going hand in hand with the search and navigate me straight to the shop all in one go but unfortunately although Android Auto is working perfectly well in the KIA the car only has one USB input port and I use that with a USB memory stick with all my music on it so the port is not available to feed data to Android Auto from my phone nor can I use voice control though I haven’t yet investigated if the in built satnav or BT phone device handles voice control but I think I read in the manual it only works with Android Auto or the Apple versions. I tried putting some music on my phones SD card so the music from that card and data for Android Auto could use both data streams at the same time but when you select the music option in Android Auto it take you to Google music subscriptions and I’m not paying Google for the music I’ve already paid for so this looks like an end to Android Auto before it even started that is unless I buy a multi-expensive Google phone that does Android Auto wirelessly. Might be lucky and get an update for our less expensive phones but can’t see it when Google are making money out of their music subscriptions service. I might try and see if the cars system can handle a USB hub but more than likely it won’t.
The hoist is first class and is why I’ve gone for this type of car but the scooter I have is at the limit, sizewise, of what the car and its backdoor hatch can handle so sometime in future I may get a scooter that’s an inch or two shorter (for more legroom in middle row seats) and also an inch lower when the tiller is folded onto the seat for stowing because there is very little room for play when you line the scooter up to connect the lanyard from the hoist and hoist it into the car though the installer guy did say I would get use to were the scooter has to be behind the car but I know I’m not bad at judging distances but this has to be within an inch of being too close to the car or to far, still its a lot better than taking the scooter apart.
That’s it for now but give it a month or so then I can see if its worth getting another scooter.